Entrepreneur builds pharma industry in city

Dirk Perrefort

Published 2:19 am, Saturday, January 25, 2014

Perosphere President and CEO Solomon S. Steiner, Ph.D., speaks in his office at the Perosphere Inc. building in Danbury, Conn. on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014. Perosphere is Steiner's latest company, specializing in rescue medications including a reversal for new oral anticoagulants.
Photo: Tyler Sizemore

Perosphere President and CEO Solomon S. Steiner, Ph.D., describes how one of his company's drugs works in his office at the Perosphere Inc. building in Danbury, Conn. on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014. Perosphere is Steiner's latest company, specializing in rescue medications including a reversal for new oral anticoagulants.
Photo: Tyler Sizemore

Perosphere President and CEO Solomon S. Steiner, Ph.D., speaks in his office at the Perosphere Inc. building in Danbury, Conn. on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014. Perosphere is Steiner's latest company, specializing in rescue medications including a reversal for new oral anticoagulants.
Photo: Tyler Sizemore

Perosphere President and CEO Solomon S. Steiner, Ph.D., speaks in his office at the Perosphere Inc. building in Danbury, Conn. on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014. Perosphere is Steiner's latest company, specializing in rescue medications including a reversal for new oral anticoagulants.
Photo: Tyler Sizemore

Perosphere President and CEO Solomon S. Steiner, Ph.D., describes how one of his company's drugs works in his office at the Perosphere Inc. building in Danbury, Conn. on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014. Perosphere is Steiner's latest company, specializing in rescue medications including a reversal for new oral anticoagulants.
Photo: Tyler Sizemore

Perosphere President and CEO Solomon S. Steiner, Ph.D., speaks in his office at the Perosphere Inc. building in Danbury, Conn. on Friday, Jan. 3, 2014. Perosphere is Steiner's latest company, specializing in rescue medications including a reversal for new oral anticoagulants.
Photo: Tyler Sizemore

More Information

Drugs Solomen Steiner helped to createAfrezza - A rapid acting insulin that is inhaled rather than injected. Clinical trails have shown that the drug reduces the risk of hypoglycemia and reduces weight gain.Ultra rapid acting insulin - a form of injectable insulin that is designed to more rapidly absorb into the blood stream than what's on the market today for Type1 and Type 2 diabetes.Per977 - Clinical studies have shown that the drug reverses, within 10 minutes, the new oral anticoagulants on the market today, for which there are no approved reversal agents.

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DANBURY -- When the regulatory atmosphere in New York was too much to handle, Solomen Steiner brought his pharmaceutical company to Danbury.

Since then Steiner has started two other pharmaceutical companies in the city. His latest enterprise, Perosphere Inc., is just getting off the ground.

Through his businesses Steiner has created more than 500 high-paying jobs in the city, and helped turn Danbury into a pharmaceutical industry destination.

"We started in Westchester but it became increasingly difficult to get any research done," said Steiner, a scientist and entrepreneur who prefers working in the laboratory to working in the boardroom. "There were four layers of regulators and they all wanted something a little different."

"The universe of true entrepreneurs is very small," he said. "These are the kind of people who seen an opportunity and create a product, which is especially difficult in the heavily regulated and competitive pharmaceutical industry."

Bull added that Steiner's businesses have helped draw scientists to the area and increase the pool of talent in the city and surrounding towns.

"We are very fortunate to have life science and pharmaceutical cluster industries in the city that will provide well-paying jobs for many years to come, especially with an aging and obese society," Bull said.

The Pharmaceutical Discovery Corporation eventually became Mannkind, which is developing Afrezza, a form of insulin that is inhaled rather than injected. The idea for the drug came to Steiner after his 18-month-old niece was diagnosed with diabetes.

Because of the potential for severe hypoglycemia, the girls' parents had to wake her every evening to check for possible fatal drops in her blood sugar levels.

"I wanted to do something to help," he said.

The new insulin Steiner helped to create reduces the chances of severe hypoglycemia in diabetic patients by up to 50 percent. It also reduces the potential for weight gain.

The drug is currently awaiting FDA approval, which some hope could come as early as this year. The FDA has scheduled a meeting for April 1 to review the application.

"A lot of people are very optimistic," Steiner said.

If the drug is approved, hundreds of additional manufacturing jobs would likely be created in the city as the company ramps up production.

Shortly after leaving Mannkind in 2003, Steiner created Biodel, a company that produces a more rapidly absorbed, injectable form of insulin that is still in clinical trials.

Steiner left as the company's chief executive officer in March, 2010, but it turned out to be a rather brief retirement.

"I was loafing around for about two weeks and I got really bored," he said. "So I sat down at my computer and started designing this molecule. I had a crazy idea I thought would work."

After talking with friends about infants who were killed after being given high doses of oral anticoagulants in 2008, Steiner again knew he wanted to do something to help. The new form of oral anticoagulants, he explained, have no available drug to reverse the anti blood clotting effects.

But the molecule Steiner developed, Per977, appears to do just that.

Oral anticoagulants first came onto the market in 2010, when Boehringer Ingelheim, the giant among the city's pharmaceutical companies, introduced Pradaxa.

Today doctors have to wait as long as two days before an anticoagulant leaves a patients' system before surgery can be performed.

The drug under development by Steiner and his newest company, Perosphere Inc, has cut that time down to about 10 minutes, according to clinical trials on the drug. Steiner brought Biodel to Danbury from its New York origins about a year ago.

While the drugs Steiner helped to create through both Mannkind and Biodel are still in the midst of lengthy FDA approval processes, Steiner hopes Per977 will be fast-tracked by the federal agency.

He explained that because there isn't anything like the drug available on the market today, the FDA may be interested in seeing its available sooner rather than later.